Sleaze claims Advisers warned Blair over loss of cabinet's moral authority

The extent of New Labour infighting, and of Tony Blair's struggle with allegations of sleaze, has been underscored by Cabinet Office papers that show No 10 aides privately thought Gordon Brown could have breached the ministerial code.

- Kevin Rawlinson, Caroline Davies

Files released to the National Archives show that in 1998, Blair's chief spin doctor, Alastair Campbell, urged him to privately rebuke Clare Short, then the international development secretary, after she publicly denounced colleagues as “vultures”.

And Blair's chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, warned him in the same year that he needed to get to grips with what he saw as a lack of discipline among government ministers, expressing concern about ministerial probity.

So grave was the problem thought to be that No 10 considered creating a "commissioner for ministerial ethics” to shore up public trust.

Powell even went so far as to suggest in writing to Blair that there was reason to suspect that his closest political friend and, ultimately, greatest political rival, Gordon Brown, was breaching strict rules on ministerial standards, an offence for which a cabinet member would usually be expected to resign.